SIVART

[Big Rick Cook]

Set in an unnamed city, Berry's ambitious debut reverberates with echoes of Kafka and Paul Auster. Charles Unwin, a clerk who's toiled for years for the Pinkerton-like Agency, has meticulously catalogued the legendary cases of sleuth Travis Sivart. When Sivart disappears, Unwin, who's inexplicably promoted to the rank of detective, goes in search of him. While exploring the upper reaches of the Agency's labyrinthine headquarters, the paper pusher stumbles on a corpse. Aided by a narcoleptic assistant, he enters a surreal landscape where all the alarm clocks have been stolen. In the course of his inquiries, Unwin is shattered to realize that some of Sivart's greatest triumphs were empty ones, that his hero didn't always come up with the correct solution. Even if the intriguing conceit doesn't fully work, this cerebral novel, with its sly winks at traditional whodunits and inspired portrait of the bureaucratic and paranoid Agency, will appeal to mystery readers and nongenre fans alike.

I'm unimaginably interested in this novel, named The Manual of Detection for two reasons:

1. The name Sivart is everywhere.
2. It's been labeled a bit of strange fantasy detective agency story, and it's remarkably close to the ideas floating around in my head about Irish Daigle and his detective agency I may or may not have ever told you guys about.

WEIRD HUH

[Toaster]

Re: SIVART

IRISH MCDOOGLE

[John Mora]

Re: SIVART

I will beat you to the punch and write about a fantasy detective named Scottish Bagel!

[Big Rick Cook]

Re: SIVART

I will murder you in your sleep.

[Tintenfisch]

Re: SIVART

I will post in this thread.

[Sivart the Sloth Trencher]

Re: SIVART

What a dumb name. Do they think they're clever by just reversing the guy's first name and using it as his last?

Pathetic.

[Alzar]

Re: SIVART

you shoulda named yourself sivartblade

[Toaster]

Re: SIVART

Edalb Travis?

That makes no sense!